Ever wondered which of America's national parks is the largest? That would be Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, a 13.2-million-acre expanse of mountains, glaciers and untamed wilderness in Southcentral Alaska. Despite the park's massive size -- which is roughly the same as Croatia's and twice that of Massachusetts -- many Americans don't know it exists. Nor are they aware of its fascinating history, or the pressures from climate change and the Trump administration that threaten its future.
Wrangell-St. Elias is a hard place to reach, and draws only about 80,000 visitors a year. Technically you can drive in via the town of McCarthy (population 107), but the route involves almost 60 miles of gravel and it's easy to blow a tire. More common options include flying in, hiking in or arriving by riverboat. And once you're there, it's mostly empty: There are a few tiny settlements and areas that cater to visitors, but otherwise, it's a place where people like to disappear into the vastness of nature.
Stunningly beautiful, the park is defined by steep mountain ranges, including the Wrangell, the St. Elias, and the Chugach, and it contains the second-tallest mountain in North America, St. Elias. Want to see glaciers? The park's Malaspina Glacier is bigger than the state of Rhode Island. There are tidewater glaciers at its southern tip and an active volcano at Mount Wrangell, which still occasionally vents steam. Dall sheep roam the mountainous areas and there are black and brown bears throughout. On the Copper River, wild salmon runs make for some of the best fishing in the United States.
Wrangell-St. Elias was inhabited at different times by the Ahtna, Upper Tanana, Tlingit and Eyak peoples. Populations were small because the region's terrain did not support large amounts of game, so Indigenous groups tended to live in settlements by rivers where they could fish. Russians were the earliest Europeans to visit the area, drawn first by furs and then following rumors of copper. After the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, the area was further explored by U.S. army expeditions. Gold strikes elsewhere in Alaska brought plenty of hopeful prospectors.
While a few people found gold, the real bonanza was in fact copper. In 1900, prospectors noticed a green rocky outcropping and its assayed ore turned out to be 70% pure copper, making it one of the richest copper veins ever discovered. In such a remote area, transporting it out was the biggest problem. A mining engineer named Stephen Birch formed a consortium with J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheims: It became the Kennecott Mines Co. The group built a railroad, the Copper River & Northwestern Railway, and it took five years to complete despite only being 195 miles long.
Consisting of five mines clustered around the town, Kennecott was in operation from 1908 to 1938. Nearby towns such as McCarthy boomed selling liquor to the miners, and offered amenities unavailable elsewhere in Alaska: The first X-ray machine in the state was at Kennecott's infirmary. But the geological conditions that created such pure ore also concentrated it in one place, and by the late 1920s the best ore had been exhausted. The mines shut down one by one, and the last train departed Kennecott in 1938, leaving it a ghost town. The only people left were a family of caretakers whose job was to make sure the structures didn't burn down.
Wrangell-St. Elias continued to draw adventure seekers and outdoor enthusiasts, however. Famed photographer Bradford Washburn came to Mount Lucania in 1937 and took photos of the area's glaciers. As early as 1938, Ernest Gruening, then governor of the territory, suggested that the area should become a national park. "I have traveled through Switzerland extensively, have flown over the Andes ..." he said. "It is my unqualified view that this is the finest scenery I have ever been privileged to see."
But the park was so big that it was difficult to assess for outsiders; one Park Service official even noted that the region wasn't sufficiently outstanding in its beauty. In the 1960s, some federal officials wanted it to become part of the Bureau of Land Management, which would have opened it up to a mix of recreational and commercial uses. Some Alaskan politicians were leery of protecting too much of the state's land, while the Park Service and preservationist groups sought an 18-million-acre park.
Years of political battles in Congress ultimately resulted in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which set aside more than 43 million acres for parks in Alaska. It doubled the size of the Park Service in one swoop, and included Wrangell-St. Elias. It's part of what makes the Alaskan portion of the park system unique: Its sheer size and scope are unmatched. The park is part of a larger UNESCO World Heritage Site that includes Glacier Bay to the south and Kluane National Park on the Canadian side of the border.
Today, the park faces unique risks and challenges, including the effects of climate change on its thousands of glaciers, according to glaciologist David Bahr. "The tidewater glaciers are all receding," he said. "There's a normal boom-bust cycle for tidewater glaciers ... even before climate change they would periodically do massive retreats, but then they'd recover. And what we're going to see now is massive retreats but no chance of recovery."
Budget cuts looming over the Park Service also threaten Wrangell-St. Elias, Bahr explained. "In terms of management, they can't afford any cutbacks on staff at all. These are lean machines to begin with ... imagine telling people that they had say 10 to 20 people to manage all of Massachusetts."
Like all national parks, Wrangel-St. Elias has had staffing and funding problems before, Bahr said. "In the 1920s and 1930s, there wasn't much management in the park. It was managed from further away in San Francisco and up at Denali. There really wasn't anyone, you know, boots on the ground. And so there were a lot of abuses, fly-by-night mining operations that would just come into the park and hope nobody noticed."
These days, fewer than usual seasonal staff members at Wrangel St. Elias have meant that research on climate or history done by the Park Service is falling by the wayside, Bahr said. Still, the park encourages visitors to keep coming, in compliance with Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's order that national parks "remain open and accessible."
For anybody thinking of making the trip, McCarthy has reputable accommodations such as McCarthy Lodge and Currant Ridge. The town is also home to the Potato, a quirky and excellent restaurant that's open from late May to September. If you want to stay in Kennecott, the Kennicott Glacier Lodge sits in the heart of the town. Public-use cabins dot the park and are generally first-come, first-serve. Kennecott itself is managed by the Park Service, which is also responsible for preserving the historic buildings.
Hard to say what state you'll actually find the place in, though. "You can't cut a lean machine and expect it to still function," Bahr said. "The gears are just all gonna fall apart."
Zeb Larson is a writer, historian and software developer. Find more of his work at zeblarson.com.